Nine years of waiting paying off for Patriots quarterback Cassel

He once started a game at the ancient and storied Los Angeles Coliseum, but he was there as quarterback of Chatsworth High, winning the city championship. Not since high school, however, had he started a football game.

Now, fully nine years later, he was with the home team at Gillette Stadium. And still not starting.

Matt Cassel's arrival in the offensive huddle of the New England Patriots, then, was not accompanied by the heralding of trumpets or hurrahs from the other 10 players awaiting his instruction. Rather, the Pats were deflated by the sight of MVP quarterback Tom Brady being carted off to the locker room, his season ended by knee injury.

“My blood pressure was probably through the roof and my heart palpitations were up,” said Cassel, referring to his own feelings in that Sept. 7 huddle. “Then we actually hit a deep ball on the first series, about a 50-yarder to Randy (Moss), and that really helped ease the pain. Er, the tension.”

The rest of the story to this point has been much less painless than it might have been for the Patriots, remarkably, considering they replaced an icon with the NFL's most inexperienced veteran quarterback. The Pats did have their string of 21 straight regular-season wins snapped with Cassel at quarterback, and the new guy has been sacked 15 times, but he has rallied and brings the Pats into Sunday night's game against the Chargers with a 3-1 record.

Given the recent history between the Chargers and Patriots, Cassel can expect a major upsurge in the amount of fury around him. Whatever his vast overall inexperience, he was not only there when San Diego-New England relations began intensifying with a 41-17 romp by the Chargers at Gillette Stadium, but having his own momentous involvement in that game of Oct. 2, 2005.

With the game secured by the Chargers, Cassel was summoned to replace Brady in the fourth quarter, constituting the rookie's NFL debut. A seventh-round pick despite not starting a game in five years at USC, Cassel hit 2-of-4 passes for 15 yards, but also was intercepted by linebacker Donnie Edwards, who pitched the ball to safety Clinton Hart for a 40-yard touchdown return.

Therein was an intersection made even more relevant this week, three years later. Asked yesterday whether it was a shot in the dark even to draft a quarterback as unproven as Cassel, Patriots coach Bill Belichick likened it to the Chargers giving a chance to Hart, who played baseball and not football in college.

“It was a little bit of an unusual situation,” Belichick said during a conference call with San Diego writers. “But I think we've all had players like that, whether it's Hart for San Diego or (Pats guard) Steve Neal (from San Diego High), who didn't play college football, or Matt, who played college football, but didn't get to play very much. There are always players involved in unusual circumstances that, for whatever reason, they didn't get an opportunity, they were injured or something, but they came on and were able to have a productive career. It's a lot more uncommon than common, but every team's got one or two of those guys.”